


Your Body Told Me in a Dream

by orphan_account



Category: Tokyo Ghoul
Genre: Angst, Canon - Manga, M/M, Trauma, Universe Alteration, memory recovery
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-07
Updated: 2015-04-07
Packaged: 2018-03-21 16:57:13
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 13,087
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3700013
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>"The window shattered. Things broke and things broke in. The window shattered, the glass shattered, the water rushed in. Well, it wasn't water, but it was fluid and black; there was night outside the window and it was coming in, thick and dark and cocooning Haise in its silence."</i>
</p><p> </p><p>For months Haise’s memories had been threatening to return. He knew that meant remembering the people he had once loved, but at maybe at the cost of losing himself to the pain he had experienced. One night, a recollection of Hide brings back his memories before he can stop them, and he’s desperate to find out whether or not Hide is still alive.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> The title comes from ["Detail of the Woods" by Richard Siken](http://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poem/detail-woods).

There were ants under his skin. Poking up, running through his veins and teasing at his muscles. His body was filled with heat and restless twitches like he was always primed for something to happen, for some experience to begin. In those months he was reaching a ledge; he could feel the escalations. Haise could feel memories twitching in his peripheral vision. He could pick up a coat, or see some stranger from the back, or smell a certain roast of coffee, or walk past an alleyway and leave his body for a moment. For a moment he wouldn’t be able to focus on putting one foot in front of the other or his vision would blur and he’d remember a touch on his skin or a flash of hair in front of him or a nagging pain in his forehead. When Haise used his kagune it was the worst. The memories crystallized into something much larger; something with a huge rasping voice and long nails that scratched at his flesh. 

The red numbers on the clock burned one in the morning and the apartment brimmed with silence save for the gentle beat of Haise’s breathing and the shuffle of papers on the desk when he moved his elbows across the faux-wood surface. The neatly-typed text and his own freehand notes looped and blurred on the page and the light stung his eyes. It was Tuesday night—rather, Wednesday morning—and he hadn’t been into the office since the previous Friday. For the first time in the two years he’d been working at the CCG he had taken two sick days in a row in the hopes that he could calm the anxiety and odd, off-kilter sickness that sloshed in his body. He had been trying to get some paperwork done even if he wasn’t in the office, but an unfortunate side effect of the unrest in his body was that he couldn’t focus for more than ten minutes without gazing out his window or aimlessly pacing through the apartment.

Haise dropped his glasses on the desk, rubbed his eyes, and clicked off the lamp. He felt his way towards the bed in the dark and collapsed onto the sheets with a sigh. Despite his exhaustion his mind reeled pointlessly: it spun through reminders of the next day’s paperwork, sorted his calendar, catalogued outfits for the next three days, and ran through basically any other function that wasn’t getting a good night’s sleep for once in what felt like months. Or what might literally have been months—Haise wouldn’t be surprised. 

The pillow was cool beneath his face and he curled under his blankets even if he likely wouldn’t get to sleep. He pulled his phone from the bedside table and aimlessly checked for text messages—it didn’t make sense for anyone to be texting him at that hour, but maybe Urie needed to tersely remind him of a meeting or Juuzou was up late in his apartment—or he had missed an hour-old text from Akira asking him if he would be coming into work the next day. Haise immediately opened the message to answer. Something about the moment felt familiar: the way the message fit on the screen, the glow on the sheets. His arms seemed to stretch so long that he could no longer see the phone in his distant hands, just the white blur of the screen and the darkness of the bedroom encroaching on the edges of his vision. He couldn’t get his brain to move his fingers with enough preciseness to answer a message.

“Fuck,” Haise muttered. He fumbled with the phone until it flopped face-down on the bedside table, then rolled over and tucked his arms beneath the sheets. He’d had enough for one night. 

………..

_The window shattered. Things broke and things broke in. The window shattered, the glass shattered, the water rushed in. Well, it wasn't water, but it was fluid and black; there was night outside the window and it was coming in, thick and dark and cocooning Haise in its silence. The night was the night of the city: black but wearing at the corners of the buildings, letting through the white paint and steel and brick. So it was black streaked with muted whites and blues and browns; black that carried the gray figures of pedestrians passing like phantoms on the sidewalk. The room on the other side of the window, Haise’s room, Haise’s mind, filled up quickly: the objects submerged and blurred under tides that painted the room into something new. Haise could see the figures the waves brought in: faces, people, houses, and roads fleeting past like an old film strip counting the moments all the way up to the present. Then there was the scene becoming solid: the bed in which he found himself, the cell phone in his hand, and the forms of furniture crouched in the blackened room. From that place he had only the slightest memory of a shattering window; he had hardly any sense of being on the corrupted side of a disintegrated border._

_Haise had the sense of two different memories: the one that lead up to this bedroom, dim but hovering, something so familiar and welcome that he grasped for it with his mind; then there was the other, which was more a premonition than a memory. He knew of a life he would live—a new self he would see in the mirror one day. Someone older, someone tired, someone years ahead of him both in time and in pain endured. The most surprising, comforting aspect of the moment was the quiet that diffused through his mind: there were no other voices, not his own hungry screaming from the back of his mind nor that strange ghost of a woman's sugary voice. Haise hadn't been vacant in a long time. He hadn't been alone in his head in so long._

_A message lit up the screen of the cell phone—a promise that he’d be there, he being the best friend, he being a figure Haise remembered as an imprint of love like the silhouette of a shadow puppet against the wall. The phone illuminated the apartment in blue-white light. Haise sat on a bed that wasn’t his, in a home that wasn’t his. Even though he had already moved into Anteiku, he hadn’t had the chance to give back the key. He hoped it wouldn’t be a problem; he had been in the apartment so many times before, anyway. Haise had been too desperate that night to think properly._

_Dim light shone below the door and then there was a new body there: a boy and the light behind him turning the room a few shades lighter. From the bed Haise saw his friend—his best friend in the world. The love that surged up in Haise’s stomach and chest and welled into his throat did so with such ferocity that he couldn't breathe for the moment before the boy moved toward him. That love was something that came from deep in memories he hardly owned anymore: love that filled him up along with visions of sun-soaked summer days and houses and desks in rows at school; love that pulled with it his whole life because he had felt it so permanently, for so long—he remembered._

_The boy knelt before the bed and looked up at Haise. His friend's round face was lit half by the faint light from the window, gray and silvered in the moon and streaked blue with neon signs. It was dim but he knew the whole face, could reconstruct it perfectly, that he didn't need to see it. That boy’s mussed, bleached-blond hair and dark eyes and warm smile. Haise had missed such familiarity: he had missed the feeling of recognizing the face of a loved one. There was something heavy in his chest and swaddling soft and static his mind—love, despair, and suffocating longing._

_“Hide,” he choked out._


	2. Chapter 2

Haise woke to the covers stuck to his body with sweat fifteen minutes before his alarm was supposed to go off. He sat on the edge of the bed with his feet pressed to the cold wood floor and the morning air cooling his skin. The room looked larger than it was supposed to be, even when he put on his glasses. Early morning sun streaming between the blinds cast a grid of hot white light on the floor. 

Nausea rushed up Haise’s throat and he bolted from his bedroom into the bathroom he shared with both Shirazu and Urie. He leaned over the toilet, dry heaving and barely catching his glasses before they slid off his face. He probably would have thrown up if he had something in his stomach, but instead he dropped onto the tile floor with his back against the wall and unrelieved nausea sloshing in his stomach. At some point, someone had dropped a glob of toothpaste on the tile, and Haise looked at it, eyes unfocused. The white walls of the bathroom stretched higher above his head than he remembered, as if they would lose structural integrity and droop down on him like peeling wallpaper. His body sagged with exhaustion and his legs slowly relaxed flat against the chilly floor. He let his glasses slip and clatter from his grip as he leaned his head back against the wall. 

The name at the end of the dream was the last thing he could remember. It filled up his mouth even as he thought about it and longing choked up in his stomach. 

“Hide,” he whispered into the silent house. His hand slipped up under his shirt to trace the faint white scar that traversed his abdomen: the residue of a long-ago surgery that he was just beginning to remember. A door had opened inside of him and memories were seeping through the crack. Aside from the dream, the memories weren’t coming back in coherent plot lines. They didn’t come back at once, either—he could catch a fact in his mind and follow it, finding new places: new images floating through a haze. He remembered faces before names: the girl in the coffee shop that lead him to an elderly man with a soft smile beneath his wrinkles and a coffee cup in his hand that lead to a tall, slim man in a purple shirt.

The faces connected to places and the places to events and the events back to people. Memories accelerated and blurred like watching the passing scenery out of a car window until Haise felt like he was going to throw up again. He gripped the toilet seat and spat bitter bile until his arms shook and tears beaded at the corners of his eyes. 

……….

Something patted his face. Haise twitched awake to the sting of bile in his mouth and someone prodding his cheek. He groaned and opened his eyes to find Shirazu crouching in front of him. He wore pajama pants and his hair was pulled back under a cloth headband. If Haise hadn’t felt so thoroughly wrecked he would have teased him for it. 

“No,” Haise slurred as he squeezed his eyes shut again. He knew he looked and sounded awful: a headache burned at his forehead and his limbs felt only half-attached to his body, but he bent his legs—earning a loud pop from each knee—and started to push himself up from the floor. He just needed to get back into bed and he would be fine. 

“Alright, up you go, Sassan,” Shirazu said. His voice was distant and too loud at the same time, like someone screaming down a long, echoing hallway. He hooked an arm under Haise’s and helped lift him off the bathroom floor. Haise opened his eyes just enough that he could direct himself to the bedroom. Shirazu supported him all the way to the bed; thankfully, because Haise’s legs seemed to be half-functioning and entirely unwilling to help him get anywhere. 

“Thanks,” Haise mumbled as he dropped down on the bed. The impact with the mattress, however soft, sent his headache stabbing at the backs of his eyes. 

“Oh no,” came another voice from behind Shirazu. “Are you all right?” Mutsuki asked. His socks shuffled on the floor. 

“I don’t know,” Haise replied. He just wanted them to get out. He thoroughly abandoned his dignity, then moved back up to the top of the bed and dropped onto the pillow. Mutsuki and Shirazu murmured to each other, but Haise couldn’t make out what they were saying once he covered his head with another pillow. After a minute, the door clicked closed.

Memories threatened at the edge of the fog in Haise’s mind. He could feel something big just out of his reach and he knew that he didn’t want to remember whatever that was. It radiated the same murky, fetid horror that filled Haise’s mind when he used his kagune. It was rot and severed fingers and bugs crawling over Haise’s skin—it was every piece of his nightmares incarnate in a hulking mass in his head. Everything else was manageable, but whatever bulky, dark memory crouched under the fog needed to stay there. The problem was that it probably wouldn’t. He felt like a door had been opened inside him and it wouldn’t shut until all the memories escaped.

……….

_“Hide,” he whispered. He had said that name so many times that it was instinct, muscle memory, but that time, saying it felt like holding gold coins in his hands.  
“Damn, I haven’t seen you in ages!” Hide exclaimed. Hearing his voice felt familiar, too, like putting on broken-in shoes. “Do you mind if I turn on the light?” his friend asked casually, and he nodded. It was Hide’s bedroom, after all. Hide switched on the light on the bedside table and the room filled with yellow-orange glow. Hide knelt on the floor with Haise on the bed, so Haise slipped down off of the covers and onto the floor beside Hide. _

_“I’m glad you finally came,” Hide said. He looked at Haise through wide eyes and spoke softly, as if in reverence. Something was gone, too, in the back of Haise’s mind, because he couldn’t remember getting to that moment but he understood being there, and where it fit in his timeline, and he knew that he was living in it._

_“Thanks for letting me show up in your apartment,” Haise whispered. He scooted closer to Hide and rested his forehead on his friend’s shoulder. He felt Hide’s arm curl around him and his palm press softly against his back. They had done this so many times, but it was different on that side of the event. Haise had always shared everything with Hide but he knew that this time there was something he couldn’t say. It choked up back in his throat and he did want to tell Hide that he was a ghoul—he wanted to tell him that he hadn’t been around because he was living with ghouls, and one of them, or something close. He really did, he wanted to tell Hide the whole story and be comforted and held like this; he wanted to be able to lift the pressure of the secret from his chest and he knew that the only proper way to do that would be to tell his best friend._

_Haise knew he couldn’t. It was all right, though, with the feeling of Hide’s warmth against his body. He wanted to kiss Hide and hold him closer. It was stupid, he thought, to feel that way about his best friend, but it wasn’t surprising. It wasn’t a secret that they loved each other and had for years and years. They were the only people who had been there for each other their whole lives. And then, on that night, Haise knew it might be one of the last times he saw Hide. It was stupid even meeting him then—he had promised that he wouldn’t drag Hide into his mess. He couldn’t afford to bring Hide any closer to Anteiku, and the ghouls, and everything else that made Haise’s world dangerous for him._

_Hide looked down at him when Haise lifted his face up from Hide’s shoulder. With his face tipped up and Hide’s tipped down, they were close enough that Haise could feel his friend’s breath on his cheeks. His mouth was very dry but his palms were sweating with nervousness. He knew this would be his last chance._

_“I missed you,” Haise admitted. Haise lifted his hand to Hide’s shoulder._

_“I missed you too,” Hide replied with a grin. “School is boring as hell without you. I’m bored as hell without you.” He wasn’t moving away. Haise might have been imagining it, but he thought Hide had even moved closer. Haise leaned forward and brought their foreheads together; they were silent, but Haise’s heart beat erratically. He felt young. He felt fourteen years old, about to kiss that girl behind the school and terrified he’d smack their teeth together. He had, and he’d been too scared to talk to her again afterwards._

_“Can I kiss you?” Haise whispered. He was too scared to open his eyes and see Hide’s reaction; but Hide’s forehead remained pressed against his and his arm stayed around Haise’s shoulders. Haise could feel the tickle of Hide’s shaggy hair on his face._

_“Yeah, of course you can,” Hide murmured in response. He rested his hand on Haise’s thigh, but Haise could feel the room slipping away: the sensations of Hide’s arm on his shoulders, and the warmth of his hand, and the floor beneath their bodies began to fade. Haise knew, then, that it was a dream. The room was going dark. He tried to close the gap between their lips, tried to recreate the full run of the memory in his mind, or at least open his eyes to see Hide one last time._

Haise opened his eyes to the sting of daylight in his bedroom two and a half years later. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> so, the "universe alteration" mentioned in the tags is just the kiss with Hide between when Kaneki moves into Anteiku and the raid. because come on. they totally should have kissed or something.


	3. Chapter 3

The apartment was empty again by the time Haise dragged himself into the kitchen. His headache had mostly abated but his mouth still tasted like vomit. He spat water into the sink. Shirazu, Urie, Mutsuki, and Saiko must have left not long before he woke up, because the coffee in the pot was still warm. He poured himself a mug and dropped onto the couch. Akira had already sent him three messages that morning asking where he was, but he hadn’t worked up the energy to reply to them yet. Hopefully one of the squad members would tell her when they got into the office and save him the effort. 

Haise’s mind still churned restlessly; when he let his vision go out of focus new memories began solidifying. Now that they had started, they weren’t stopping; each one lead into the next in a stream of mental call-and-response. He didn’t want to follow any of them: he let the images stream past in the back of his mind, knitting themselves into logical associations despite his unwillingness, and wouldn’t let himself fixate on the violence—the sprays of blood that reckoned his present-day fights against ghouls—or the phantom pains in his body as he remembered being stabbed and struck again and again. He let the twitches of emotion pass over him even when they were so severe he wanted to throw up or the images loomed so clear that he was almost pulled out of the room into a full-force flashback. His mind was a bathtub filling with water from a leaking tap and he did not want to drown.

Haise remembered hunger; he remembered the surging hungers he had felt before his death and they horrified him. The only time he felt even close to that violence was when he used his kagune, and even then it was not as intense as he recalled. The events that had lead him to that point blurred in the distance of memory: he was no longer in the aftermath. A certain benefit of his life at the CCG compared to his life at Anteiku was that he no longer had to protect everyone in the same way that he used to--he wasn't fighting the CCG anymore, first off.

Haise was not the person he used to be. He was terrified of that person—he would not let that happen, regardless of what that required. 

The taste of the coffee washed the rest of the bile out of his mouth and he relaxed into the couch. If he didn’t fixate it wasn’t so bad. Fuck, no, it was terrible. It was terrible but it could be worse. 

“Touka,” he whispered into the apartment. Like Hide’s name it felt familiar in his mouth. Unlike Hide’s name, however, it came with less confusion—he knew that Touka was working at the :RE coffee shop. He knew she was alive and safe. Thinking about Touka’s present, though, triggered the memory of who she had been in the past. Haise didn’t have the energy to reconcile so much history—he didn’t know how to absorb and process it all. Memories came with emotions and the emotions crowded into his body at once: there was too much welling up and it wouldn’t stop welling like blood from a cut that wouldn’t heal. His body twitched in a familiar restlessness and he felt the urge to do something—work, or go to the office, or leave the house, or anything that would let him stop thinking about all the things he didn’t want to remember. But a weight dragged his limbs down into the couch. He felt like he would fall through and just keep falling. 

Haise wanted to remember Touka and Hide. And Hinami. And Anteiku—but even thinking those names brought new memories in that clouded his vision and made his heart beat so fast he felt like he was going to throw up again. The thought played over in his mind, sour and shameful: maybe he didn’t want to remember anything. Not if it came in headaches and fear and nausea. Not if his hands wouldn’t stop shaking. And there was still that thing, that huge memory, hovering and hungry and he knew he couldn’t handle it. He couldn’t handle any of it. 

_Arima would the best person to talk to about_ —Haise began to think, but with the ring of the name in his mind he saw new flashes of memory. Arima at that last battle. Arima waiting for him in the tunnels. Arima standing over his body: the last thing he saw before his vision went black. 

The coffee mug shattered on the floor and coffee spilled over the wood, but Haise couldn’t care. He pressed his face to his knees and screamed sobs through the quiet. Tremors shook through his body and he tried grasping his hair to calm his shaking hands. The tremors surged through his legs and up into his stomach and arms until he flung out his hands and closed his fists around the upholstery on the couch. 

The skin on Haise’s back broke open as his kagune fanned out above him, but like his limbs they just trembled and writhed in the air like tongues of flame. From where he sat on the couch the tips of them could brush up against the ceiling. Haise had given up on being calm; he let his body shake and screams tear his throat raw. When he had sobbed himself to exhaustion he lifted his face from his lap and wiped his eyes. His kagune retreated into his back and he noticed that his feet were wet with spilled coffee. Cleaning up, at least, helped distract him from the memory—the everyday tedium of getting a rag from the kitchen to wipe his skin and the floor; picking up the shards of mug and throwing them in the trash can calmed his panic. 

He promptly collapsed back onto the couch. There was no point in thinking he could go to work when he might accidentally loose his kagune in the building or at least break down sobbing at his desk. The screen of his phone showed three new messages from Akira and two more from Mutsuki, but he ignored them and closed his eyes.

It wasn’t the memory of Arima. He could have handled that one. It was what came before: he had been in the tunnels. Alone, for a long time, save for the screaming voice in the back of his head. Alone at least physically. He wished more than anything that it could have stayed that way—that Hide hadn’t shown up in front of him and touched him and smiled like he was harmless. Fuck, Hide loved him. But then there was the scream, the voice, the automatic twitch of his muscles and Haise was gone: his brain shut off, the scream took over, and his teeth cut into his best friend. Hunger so great and desperate washed over him that it was the only sensation he remembered how to feel. His kagune held Hide still as Haise ripped into his body and Hide’s screams ripped through the tunnel. 

After that was a long stretch of black and then Arima. He remembered his friend’s screams and then Arima’s stoic, pale face, and that was enough. 

……….

Haise awoke to hands again. This time Akira, pushing his shoulder and hovering over him. Her hair hung down on either side of her face. She wore her usual work suit and when he opened his eyes she stood up straight and crossed her arms authoritatively. 

“Come on, get up,” Akira demanded. She tugged on Haise’s shoulder until he complied and sat up. “You smell bad. You need to shower and get something to eat.” 

Haise nodded but looked past her out the window. Sunlight glinted off the buildings outside and he decided he did not want to know what time it was. Akira uncrossed her arms and her expression softened. 

“What’s wrong?” she asked. “You’ve never been out of work for this long.” She dropped onto the couch beside Haise, arms braced on her thighs. He didn’t know how to respond. 

“I’m remembering,” he replied quietly. They had talked about his memories before, but only briefly, usually in the wake of some kind of issue like what had happened when the quinxes fought Serpent in the street. Akira didn’t know that his memories had been threatening to resurface for months in a very tangible way, but she nodded and watched him with concern. 

“How much have you remembered?” she asked.

“I don’t know. Most of the last few years, I think. At least the big stuff. I remember a little about being a kid. People, too.” He choked on another sob, but he rubbed his eyes and pushed his hair out of his face to distract himself. He did smell terrible—like sweat and, faintly, vomit and coffee. “I don’t remember my name. My old name. I can’t make the memories stop but I can’t remember that,” he said with a stuttering, humorless laugh. He felt odd telling Akira that much, but he needed to get his memories out somewhere. There was too much inside him at once. 

Akira pursed her lips and looked down at her hands. “I’ve seen your file,” she admitted. Haise turned to look at her in complete surprise. “Arima left it on his desk once, and I was in his office before a meeting. I didn’t read the whole thing, but I did see it.”

Haise didn’t know how to respond. Hearing Arima’s name sent a jolt of horror into his stomach. Arima’s face was the last image he saw and now the prospect of seeing Arima ever again terrified him. Haise glanced at the door as if he might walk into the apartment. 

“I’m sorry,” Akira continued. 

“No,” Haise said. “It wasn’t your job to tell me. I didn’t even want to know.” It was true—how could Akira have broken that news to him? That he wasn’t just someone entirely different, but also one of the most notorious ghouls in CCG history? He didn’t expect that from her, and he didn’t regret that she had delayed this excruciating experience of remembering. 

“I should have said something,” she argued.

“No, it’s fine, really,” Haise replied softly. “What was my name?” he asked after a pause.

“Kaneki Ken,” Akira said. When he heard the name Haise recognized it immediately as his own—or as belonging to the person he had been, but nonetheless a name he had heard for almost twenty years. It was familiar but dissonant: it no longer fit his body even though he understood it as once belonging to him. He had grown so big for it, grown other parts of himself and lived outside of the name for so long, that he could no longer wear it as his. 

“Yeah,” Haise responded. “I’m going to go take a shower.”

“I’ll be here,” Akira replied. She leaned back in the couch. Haise smiled slightly before he stood up. 


	4. Chapter 4

Akira had brewed a new pot of coffee and cleaned up the residual mess on the living room floor by the time Haise had showered, changed, and eaten. He usually didn’t eat in front of anyone who wasn’t already living in the apartment, but in that situation he couldn’t find the energy to care. Haise felt considerably better after eating, but restless energy still coursed in his limbs. He tapped an erratic beat on the floor with his toe. 

“Quit that,” Akira chided, and he stilled his foot. She slid a cup of coffee over the counter and poured one for herself. The clock above the oven showed that it was already two in the afternoon. 

“You’re missing work,” Haise commented, staring down into his black coffee. In the sunlight from the window the surface gleamed like an oil slick, and Haise felt a rush of nausea. That big memory was waiting but he didn’t want to pry into it. If it had remained dark despite his remembering, that probably meant that it needed to stay buried. And he could see what happened on either side of that dark gulf, the change inside who he had been: whatever had been able to cause that violent shift wasn’t something Haise wanted to experience again. 

“It’s fine,” Akira replied with a shrug. “My last meeting ended at noon and the paperwork can wait until tomorrow. We can’t have you missing any more work right now, anyway. The squad drives me up the wall when you’re not around.” 

Haise chuckled and took a long drink from his mug. “Urie and Shirazu are great when they’re not fighting,” he said with a small smile. 

“I wouldn’t know. They’re always fighting,” Akira replied with a smile. They fell silent, then, for a moment. Haise sighed.

“You have access to the CCG personnel files, right?” he asked. 

Akira looked at him under raised brows. “Yes, aside from the highly-classified ones,” she replied. 

“I need to look up someone who used to work for the CCG,” Haise explained. “Someone from before.” He didn’t quite know how to name what had happened on the other side of the event that had gotten him where he was—the before. His history was a sequence of rifts: rapid jumps in his personality between _before the tragedy_ and _the aftermath._ He was one person before the tragedy and an entirely new creature on the other end. Haise decided he was sick of new identities: he wanted to stay in one place for once. He wanted to rest. 

Akira sipped her coffee silently before answering. She didn’t look like she was about to rebuke his request; rather, her expression had fallen farther than neutrality into a sort of blank sadness. 

“That sounds fine,” she answered quietly. She didn’t ask who, just looked down into her coffee mug and Haise knew she understood something about the situation, though he didn’t know enough about her to say what that was. He felt bad for not knowing; there was far more to Akira than he had yet had the chance to learn. 

“Can I see it now?” Haise asked. Akira hesitated, but went to retrieve her laptop from her bag by the door. Thankfully, the CCG personnel files from the last ten years had been digitized, and Akira could access the database from her computer—Haise didn’t want to know what it had been like trying to research cases before the age of digitized ghoul information files. Akira brought the computer to the kitchen counter and, once it was on, logged into the CCG intranet. Because of her Special Class ranking and squad leader status, she was privy to considerably more information than Haise at Rank 1. She pulled up a clunky-looking gray search screen and pushed the laptop towards Haise. 

“Here, you can search by name, year, or rank, or missions if you know the names of them,” she explained, but Haise was already typing “Nagachika Hideyoshi” into the “name” search bar. His fingers shook against the keys. 

A link to a file showed up immediately. Haise could see, beside the name, the photo that the CCG must have taken on his first day for his ID card. Hide, with his shaggy bleached-out hair, was grinning into the camera as if for a school yearbook photo. Haise couldn’t help but smile, slightly, at seeing a face he hadn’t seen for years. His best friend’s face. Someone he had truly loved. This was different than Touka: he knew that Touka was still alive and healthy, since he had seen her at the coffee shop—and it was a relief, too, as odd as it was that he had seen her so many times without recognizing that she had been one of his closest friends. With Hide he was allowing himself the hope that he might still be alive, but had no idea. He wanted to cry again, but he wouldn’t with Akira standing over him and watching his face tensely. 

Haise bit his lip and clicked on the link to the file. It would be right at the top, by his name and birth date and blood type and position—that little STATUS box that would read “alive” or “deceased.” Haise lingered on the photo for a moment longer. Until he looked he could keep the hope that Hide might be alive. Akira had been right to call him naïve. 

He finally moved to scan the basic information boxes. Nagachika Hideyoshi. Twenty-two years old that year, just like Haise. 

_Alive._

Haise let out a stuttering, breathy laugh. He smiled wide and pressed his hands to his face. “Thank you,” he whispered through his fingers. “Thank you,” he repeated. 

When he lowered his hands, he saw that Akira had relaxed noticeably, though she remained silent. She was probably glad not to have to handle whatever the result of bad news would have been. Haise returned to scrolling down the file in hopes that he could find some information on where Hide was currently located. At the beginning, he had been listed as working in the 20th Ward, but the last line of the report read that he had been transferred to the CCG office in the 3rd Ward after the Anteiku Raid. There was an address. There was a phone number. 

Haise jumped from the chair to retrieve a pen from a drawer in the kitchen. He returned to the computer and scrawled the information on the back of his hand as if it might disappear from the screen. The address was probably two years old, but at least it was a place to start. 

“Thank you,” Haise said again, this time to Akira.

“Did you find what you needed?” she asked. Her face had reverted to a forced neutrality. Her hand gripped the edge of the kitchen counter, but Haise didn’t notice her knuckles turning white. There was a lot he didn’t know about Mado Akira. 

“Yeah,” Haise replied with a smile. 

……….

The light between the blinds had turned blue and silver in the nighttime. The blue sheets on the bed were matte black except where a streak of light from the moon or, more likely, some street light dyed the fabric white. Haise sprawled on his back in bed and revisited the thought of Hide on repeat. He scrolled through every scrap of memory he had and followed it as far as he could before it led into another moment. Haise reveled like he was eating the most delicious food, and it was infinite, and he never felt badly about eating it. Summer sunshine fuzzed at the edges of each memory, even if it had been the coldest day in the winter: the light seemed to radiate from Hide, from the smiles he gave and the energy with which he filled the room. Haise could feel the familiar imprint of Hide’s hands on his back when they hugged and the weight of Hide’s arm draped across his shoulders. 

Haise had transferred the address and phone number onto a notepad on his desk and saved it in the notes in his phone for good measure. He wondered whether he could expect Hide to welcome him if he decided to visit. Fear and anxiety sent restless energy coursing through his body and he rolled onto his side in the bed. Hide had always forgiven him for everything, growing up. He hadn’t even freaked out when he found out that Haise was a ghoul. This was different, however. Haise hated himself for what he had done to Hide and it would be justified for Hide to feel the same way. A scenario immediately played through Haise’s mind: what if he showed up on Hide’s doorstep and Hide screamed at him or slammed the door in his face? It didn’t seem like a particularly Hide thing to do, but it had been almost three years and Haise wouldn’t blame him. 

The joy and relief Haise felt when he saw that Hide was alive washed back over him. Even if Hide never wanted to speak to him again, Haise wouldn’t mind as long as he was alive and healthy and happy. But what if Hide could feel that way when he saw Haise again? What if he had been waiting to find out where his best friend had gone for three years? He could hate Haise—or Kaneki, as he would still know him—or have moved on, but the chance that he might be overjoyed to see Haise again was enough that Haise wanted to get out of bed that minute and take a train to the 3rd Ward. Then he’d go to see Touka, of course; maybe he’d take Hide with him to the coffee shop to see her.

In the moments before sleep, Haise had conjured the phantom of his best friend lying beside him under the sheets. 


	5. Chapter 5

Warm, stale wind rushed through the station as the train squealed to a stop. Haise allowed himself to be pushed with the current of people into the nearest train car. He ended up sandwiched between a middle-aged woman who smelled intensely of perfume and a kid who wouldn’t take off his backpack even though it occupied enough space for another person, or at least give Haise enough room so he wasn’t almost head-butting the woman in front of him every time the train shuddered to a stop. With the scant hours of sleep he had gotten the previous night and the night before, the broken coffee machine in the office, and the fact that he had gone in for a full day of work that morning after three days of lockdown in the apartment, Haise should have been exhausted—but the combined excitement, fear, and anxiety of seeing Hide again kept his body buzzing with energy. 

Dodging Arima that day had been horrid. Haise had enlisted the help of Akira and a confused Mutsuki to keep himself secured in the quinx office the whole day—both to avoid Arima and to allow for the emotional instability that came with the process of remembering—but every time Haise stepped out into the hall he watched over his shoulder constantly to make sure Arima didn’t appear behind him. Every thought of Arima prompted memories of Haise’s death—Kaneki’s death?—to flash into Haise’s mind, and every flash of memory left him stiffening his body in residual fear and expectation of pain. Haise had managed not to break down in the office, though he struggled to concentrate on his work, but he knew that seeing Arima would throw him into dangerous flashback territory. He didn’t want his kagune coming out in the office, especially surrounded by quinque-obsessed CCG operatives.

Haise knew that dwelling on thoughts of Arima, even on the train heading to the 3rd Ward, wouldn’t help him feel any safer. He caught himself seeing a pale-haired man towards the back of the train car and superimposing Arima’s face over his features—but no, his hair was too blond and he was too short, it couldn’t possibly be him. Instead Haise tried to focus on the excitement and anticipation. By the time the train pulled into the first stop in the 3rd Ward thirty-five minutes later, Haise’s neighboring travelers had changed completely at least ten times and he had checked to make sure the paper with the address and number on it was still folded in his pocket just as often. He had also played two full games of Sudoku on his phone and typed out a fifteen-item list of assignments he had neglected while away from the office, though both of those tasks had been difficult for the shake of his fingers across the screen. He planned to drop some of those responsibilities on the rest of the squad. 

Haise couldn’t calm his heartbeat when the train jerked into the station. He left the car with a slightly smaller crowd than he had entered with in the 20th Ward and followed a mob of college students and businesspeople returning home onto the street. According to his Google Maps app, which was just about the only thing that saved his ass when he was navigating unfamiliar wards, he was only half a mile from the apartment building where Hide lived. He wasn’t far from the CCG offices for that ward, he knew, which made sense if Hide still worked there. Haise joined the crowd on the sidewalk and hurried toward the address. Evening tinted the city navy-blue and lavender, but none of the streetlights had come on yet, and the sunset sparkled white on the metal and glass of tall office buildings. The conversations of passing strangers, the hum of cars in the street, and the smell of exhaust filled the interstice between bodies, apartments, and restaurants. 

A string of worries hit Haise when he was about a quarter of a mile to the apartment. He should have called in advance, probably, but he didn’t know how he could possibly explain the situation over the phone. He probably just shouldn’t have shown up—after all, Hide had been living without him for years. He might not even live in that apartment any more. Haise’s palms were sweating and he quickly wiped them on his trousers. He wished he weren’t still wearing his crisp gray shirt and black pants from work. What if Hide didn’t even recognize him? Well, Haise knew that one was stupid. They had known each other for long enough that Hide would recognize him anywhere. 

Haise couldn’t help but swear under his breath when he reached the door of the apartment building. He wiped his hands on the legs of his pants again and entered the cramped, blue-tiled lobby. A young couple carrying shopping bags stood in front of the elevator as it counted down back to the ground floor. Haise didn’t want to wait—he hurried through the door to the concrete stairwell and up to the fourth floor. _Apartment 412._ He chanted the number in his head as he passed the rows of identical blue-painted doors until he found 412 in the middle of the hallway. 

Haise took a deep breath and knocked before he could convince himself not to.

……….

After thirty seconds no one had come to the door. Haise had knocked again, harder, but received no response. He probably should have called in advance. 

Haise had been waiting on the carpeted hallway floor for twenty minutes. After knocking two more times and walking halfway to the stairwell and back to the apartment twice, he decided that he didn’t care if he had to wait for three hours for Hide to come back. He didn’t even care if he waited three hours for an old man to return to the apartment and tell him that the guy who had lived in 412 had moved two months previous as long as the man knew where Hide had gone. So Haise sat on the floor and looked up every time a door opened or he heard footsteps in the hallway or the ding of the elevator. After those twenty minutes and _Are you okay?_ texts from Akira and all the quinxes besides, unsurprisingly, Urie, his heart beat so fast every time the elevator opened that he was breathing hard and his hands were shaking. 

At 6:08, the elevator opened and Haise jumped to his feet. A young man with bleached hair, cropped shorter on the sides than he remembered but still shaggy and growing out dark at the roots, crossed the threshold of the elevator. Hide had his head tipped down, looking at his phone, with a backpack slung on his right shoulder. Haise couldn’t make himself run down the hall—his brain had stopped sending signals to his body. Hide didn’t look up when he began walking towards his apartment. As he neared, Haise noticed that the left sleeve of his blue collared shirt had been folded up and pinned shut about ten centimeters below his shoulder, where his left arm stopped. His gait seemed slightly off, too, with a reliance on his right side. Horror washed over Haise’s enthusiasm when he realized that he had done that. If he hadn’t been so in awe of seeing Hide again he might have turned and sprinted back into the street and back to the train or just run all the way back to the 20th Ward. 

Halfway down the hall, Hide looked up, locked his eyes on Haise, and froze. He slowly returned his phone to his pocket, squinting slightly—he was almost certainly questioning whether he was awake, or actually seeing a living person, or hallucinating. Haise felt the same way.

Haise finally remembered how to move his muscles.

“Hide,” he managed. 

“Kaneki?” Hide asked, hardly above a whisper. 

“Yeah,” Haise replied with a nod. Hide rushed forward. He let his backpack slip off his shoulder and onto the floor on the way so he could immediately throw his arm around Haise and pull him close. 

“Oh my god, Hide,” Haise sobbed as he clutched at his friend’s body. He buried his face in Hide’s neck and held him tighter then he had ever held anyone. 

“You’re Kaneki, right?” Hide asked through tears. “Is this real? You’re Kaneki?”

“Yeah,” Haise repeated. He had remembered Hide’s face and his touch and his voice but Haise hadn’t been able to recapture his smell. With his face against Hide’s neck, however, he could smell boyish cologne and cheap shampoo and whatever it was underneath those scents that made Hide himself. “Home” had seemed like an elusive concept for the last two years: the quinx apartment had never been home to him, despite the presence of people for whom he genuinely cared. 

This was home. Hide was home. 

Hide pulled back just enough that he could look at Haise’s face. Hide looked older, with a sharp jaw and thinner cheeks, and his amber-brown eyes were watery with tears. 

“Hide, I’m so sorry,” Haise said. “I have to apologize now. I’m so, so sorry. In the raid, I almost…and I’m sorry,” he faltered at the end of his sentence.

“I don’t…it’s been…” Hide stuttered. He gripped Haise’s shoulder. “I forgive you,” he continued. 

“You shouldn’t,” Haise insisted. “Shit, your arm, Hide!” 

“It’s okay, I had two,” Hide replied with a grin. Haise tightened his grip around Hide’s body and pulled him into another fierce hug. 

“Come on, Ken,” Hide whispered. “Let’s go inside.” Haise didn’t want to let him go, but he lowered his arms so Hide could unlock the apartment. Haise bent down to help Hide with his backpack while Hide opened the door and turned on the light. 

Haise kicked off his shoes and left Hide’s backpack beside the blue couch that cut the living room in two. The apartment was a living room with an attached kitchen and a door leading off to a bedroom. The walls were mostly bare but adorned in a few places with movie posters and, over the television, a framed photo of Hide and his family on the beach. The counters were clean and the table beside the couch was empty save for a stack of papers with the CCG letterhead printed at the top. An open window over the kitchen table let in a cool, humid breeze that sent a few of the papers skittering across the table. 

The two of them immediately dropped onto the couch, knees almost touching. Haise hesitantly moved closer so they both sat against the back cushions with the sides of their bodies pressed together so Hide had to turn his head to the left to face Haise. The way Hide’s arm rested between them meant his fingers casually brushed Haise’s knee. Haise just wanted to hug Hide forever, anyway, so he didn’t mind. 

“I’m sorry I didn’t—” Haise began.

“No! I won’t hear it!” Hide interrupted. 

“This is about something different,” Haise defended. Hide scrunched his eyebrows together and set his face in a look of mock incredulity. Haise couldn’t help but smile. “Really. I’m sorry that it’s been so long,” he said. 

“Yeah! Seriously, I thought you were dead, Kaneki! I thought you were dead for, like, three years! Where the hell were you?” Hide exclaimed. Despite his wide, confused eyes, his lips twitched into a smile at the corners. 

“I _was_ dead, and the CCG brought me back. I didn’t remember anything until this week. I didn’t even know you existed.” He knew his explanation was nonsense. 

“The CCG?” Hide asked. He began swiping his thumb slowly over Haise’s knee as if it he didn’t even notice. “Also, that makes no goddamn sense. So you need to explain that more later.”

“All right,” Haise replied with a grin. “Yeah, I work there now. In the 20th Ward. Actually, I have a different name now.”

“Not Kaneki Ken?” Hide replied. “I guess that makes sense. If they were trying to keep you low-profile. Give you a secret identity, you know.”

“Haise,” he said. “Sasaki Haise. I’m practically a super hero.” 

“Haise,” Hide said, trying out the name. He said it slowly, and then again: “Haise. Right,” he smiled. 

“You still work at the CCG,” Haise commented. He nodded to the papers on the table. They looked like statistics sheets on ghoul attacks over the last ten years. 

“Boring stuff,” Hide said with a laugh. “You know, paperwork, analysis shit. I’m just in the basement sorting through files most of the time. But, really, fuck work,” his hand tightened on Haise’s knee, “I’m getting a beer, and you’re telling me about everything that’s happened to you in the past, like, forever.” Hide stood up and headed to the fridge. 

“I guess I don’t have to go into the office tomorrow,” Haise remarked.

“Damn right you don’t,” Hide replied. He pointed a beer bottle threateningly at Haise. “We are staying up all night, you’re sleeping over, and I’m calling in sick. It isn’t very often that you reunite with your dead best friend.”


	6. Chapter 6

It was one in the morning before their conversation stalled. There was so much for Haise to explain and too much for Hide to update him on that they could have been talking for days straight if Haise hadn’t started leaning into the couch and closing his eyes. The thought of holding Hide close was becoming steadily more appealing as the warmth of Hide’s presence filled up his body. They had already been leaning into each other for hours; Haise had draped his arm over the back of the couch behind Hide’s head and their thighs pressed against each other. The sun had set and left the apartment dark save for the orange glow of a lamp beside the couch. Their voices had faded with the light outside and remained just above a murmur; for their closeness, they didn’t need to speak any more loudly. 

Haise could feel sadness swelling up in the silence between them. It was a comfortable, warm quiet interrupted only by the churn of water streaming through old pipes in the walls, but in it the unlikelihood of the situation struck Haise. Somehow, through all of their trauma, he and Hide had survived, and somehow Haise had found his best friend again, and somehow they still loved each other. That wasn’t the kind of luck to which Haise had grown accustomed. 

Haise reached out his hand and set it over Hide’s where it rested loosely Haise’s knee. He twined their fingers together; he didn’t want it to seem like an accidental gesture. Hide didn’t move besides to press the pads of his fingers briefly into the back of Haise’s hand and smile. His expression was relaxed and sleepy.

“C’mere,” Hide mumbled, tugging lightly on Haise’s hand. “I haven’t hugged you enough,” He lifted his head so Haise could drop his arm from the back of the couch onto Hide’s shoulder. Hide responded by moving into the space between Haise’s arms and pulling him into an embrace. Warmth crept over Haise’s body and he gratefully held onto Hide. The way they were seated on the couch, he had to lift his legs into Hide’s lap to get them as close as he wanted to be, but Hide didn’t seem to mind. They pushed their bodies together and Hide dropped his chin onto Haise’s shoulder. When Hide exhaled his chest pressed against Haise’s. 

“I missed you, Haise,” Hide admitted. Haise felt the weight of Hide’s arm clutching at his back and it was like no time had passed. They were eighteen, at graduation from high school, hugging in celebration on the steps of the school. They were fourteen, walking down the sidewalk on a summer day, and Hide had draped his arm casually around Haise’s shoulder. They were nine, clutching each other in sorrow on the floor of Hide’s bedroom. They were twenty-two, holding on to each other’s bodies in relief and love. 

“I almost killed you,” Haise whispered again into Hide’s neck. “I know you didn’t want me to feel bad about it, but you’re my best friend and I almost killed you. I can’t just let that go.”

“I want you to. I know you weren’t in control of yourself. It took me a really long time to understand, but it’s been two years and it’s okay now.” Haise could feel Hide’s breath on his skin when he spoke. It rose goosebumps on his arms. 

“You didn’t deserve anything that happened to you,” Haise said. 

“Neither did you,” Hide countered. He drew back slowly and lifted his arm from Haise’s back. Instead of breaking the moment and moving away like Haise expected, he cupped Haise’s cheek in his hand; Haise leaned into the touch. He kept his arms looped around Hide’s waist. Haise could tell that neither of them were sure how to progress. There was something in the air: the knowledge that they had both lived almost this same moment before. It had been the last time they saw each other before night of the Anteiku Raid. The first and last time Haise had kissed his best friend. The memory materialized in Haise’s mind: Hide’s hand on his body, the darkened apartment, and then the warm, soft give of Hide’s lips against his mouth. 

Hide’s eyes were half-lidded, looking down at Haise’s lips. In Hide’s lamp-lit apartment two and a half years later, Hide’s lips pressed against Haise’s in the second kiss they ever shared. 

Haise kissed back softly; he didn’t want to push Hide beyond what he wanted to do. Hide pulled away and slipped his hand back into Haise’s hair. 

“I can’t believe we waited so long to kiss again,” Hide said thickly. “I guess you were kinda preoccupied.” Haise couldn’t help but laugh, mostly out of giddiness at the fact that he had the chance to hear Hide’s cheesy jokes to begin with—and that he was holding Hide in his arms, with his legs draped over Hide’s lap, having just kissed him. For the first time in months he did not feel threatening memories buzzing from wall to wall of his skull. 

“I missed you, too,” Haise finally answered. He leaned in to kiss Hide again and Hide pressed back harder. Haise wanted to kiss Hide’s whole body and hold him for as long as physically possible. Two and a half years was a lot of lost time. 

“We should kiss more. Like, a lot more,” Hide suggested. “If you want.” 

Haise smiled and leaned in again—he was glad Hide hadn’t changed much. Haise pushed himself up to straddle Hide’s lap and kissed him desperately. He cupped Hide’s cheek with one hand and pressed his fingers into his hair with the other. He wanted to look at Hide again—he hadn’t yet had enough time to memorize his face and imprint it so deep that if he ever lost his memories again it would be the only image that remained. Haise grudgingly pulled away and looked down at Hide’s face. The glow of the lamp illuminated his hair in a shade of gold and lit his eyes amber. His lips were slightly parted and red from kissing; his long eyelashes lowered as he closed his eyes and leaned forward to kiss Haise again. 

Desperation surged up again and Haise nipped at Hide’s bottom lip. Hide responded with a demanding kiss that Haise opened his mouth to receive. Their tongues slipped together, sloppy and warm. Haise hummed quietly in the back of his throat and grinded his hips forward against Hide’s lap. A surprised groan slipped from Hide’s mouth. He clumsily moved his hips up in response and Haise couldn’t help but grin. 

“Don’t laugh at me! I don’t do this very often,” Hide exclaimed, but Haise could tell he was feigning being offended. There were certain things that didn’t change, and Hide being a terrible faker was one of them. 

“I don’t either,” Haise laughed. He decided to take advantage of the space between them and lowered his hands to undo the buttons on Hide’s shirt. 

“Wait a sec,” Hide interrupted, and Haise stilled his hands on the third button from the top. “Are we going too fast? Are you okay with this?”

“Yeah, I am,” Haise enthused. “Fuck, it’s been _years_. I don’t want to wait if you don’t.” Hide nodded, eyes wide, and pushed up to kiss Haise again. Haise slid his hands down another button.

“Shit, sorry,” Hide muttered. “One more thing. I have these scars on my side. They’re big. I don’t know if you want to see them,” he explained quickly. Haise took a breath before responding. They both knew how the scars had gotten there. 

“I don’t mind seeing them. I want to see you whether or not you have scars,” he asserted. 

“Okay,” Hide nodded. Haise undid the last couple buttons and ran his fingers up Hide’s chest. He pushed his hands up over Hide’s shoulders and under the fabric of his shirt so he could push it from Hide’s body. Hide pulled it the rest of the way off and dropped it on the couch beside him. Haise looked down at Hide’s chest, sun-browned and lean but not muscular, where it sloped to small round belly and a tangle of white scar tissue that swept up his along the right side of his abdomen. A long, ragged scar ran from just above his hip to the middle of his ribcage; the scar tissue puckered in a seam there but white scars fanned out on either side like sea foam breaking at the end of a wave. His arm was similarly marked where it capped off below his shoulder. Haise carefully traced his finger along the edge of the scar down Hide’s abdomen.

“I’m so sorry,” Haise whispered. “I’m so sorry I did this to you.” 

“Please don’t do that,” Hide said. “The scars aren’t good, but they’re part of me now.” Hide ran his hand up Haise’s thigh. He continued: “If you want to do this with me you should. You don’t need to feel bad about it.” Hide looked at him more sternly than Haise remembered seeing, and Haise nodded in response.

“Do you want to lie down?” Haise asked. Hide leaned back and dropped onto the couch cushions, drawing the lone throw pillow under his head. Haise put his knees on either side of Hide’s leg and lowered his body on top of him. Hide’s hand crept down Haise’s back and grabbed his ass, encouraging Haise to grind down onto his thigh, eliciting a moan when Haise met Hide’s lips with his own. Hide slid his hand under the back of Haise’s shirt and traced the muscles there. In response Haise pushed up on his knees and unbuttoned his dress shirt while Hide pressed his hand under Haise’s undershirt, against his stomach.

“Shit, you got really muscular,” Hide laughed as he trailed his fingers up Haise’s stomach. Haise pulled off his dress shirt and undershirt and discarded them on the floor. In his exploration of Haise’s musculature Hide trailed his fingers along the pale scar that ran across his stomach above his navel. “You have a scar too. I’ve never seen it,” Hide said. His voice was quiet and he dragged the soft pads of his fingers over Haise’s skin reverently. 

“I get my ass kicked a lot,” Haise replied. Hide dipped his hand below Haise’s navel and traced his fingers down to the crotch of his pants. Haise’s breath stuttered in his throat.

“Is that all right?” Hide asked, looking up at Haise. 

“Yeah, that’s…that’s a great idea,” Haise murmured. Hide smiled and massaged his palm against the place where Haise’s growing erection pushed at the fabric of his pants. Haise lowered a hand into Hide’s hair and dropped the other to his chest to circle Hide’s nipple with his thumb. 

“Why are buttons...why do they exist,” Hide laughed as he struggled to undo the button on Haise’s pants with one hand. Haise smiled and reached to do it himself. “Hey, no, I’m doing it! This is just a hard angle,” Hide exclaimed. He slipped the button free and pulled down the zipper.

“Should I take these off?” Haise asked.

“Yeah!” Hide replied with wide eyes. Haise awkwardly tried to push the pants down his hips and get them off while remaining kneeling over Hide, but he couldn’t get them past his spread thighs without toppling over.

“Ugh,” Haise groaned and rolled back on his ass on the couch. “I’ve been waiting to do this for years and I can’t even get my pants off.” Hide had pushed himself up to balance on his elbow and watched Haise wriggle out of his pants at the other end of the couch.

“Maybe you should take off your boxers while you’re down there,” Hide suggested. 

“I will, but you aren’t as smooth as you think you are,” Haise pulled down his green boxer briefs.

“Green looks good on you,” Hide said, but Haise could tell more was coming because he was already breaking into a giggle, “but it looks better on my floor.”

“Sorry, I can’t have sex with you anymore,” Haise joked. Hide was giggling and Haise thought it was the best sound in the world. 

“No!” Hide howled. “Come back here,” he begged. Haise climbed back along the couch and into Hide’s lap again. His dick hung half-hard over Hide’s stomach; Hide’s face fell from a smile to a sort of awed stare. Haise dipped his head and kissed Hide slowly. Their tongues met and Hide gripped Haise’s hip. He rubbed his thumb into Haise’s skin and dragged his fingers down toward his crotch. Haise pulled up so Hide could reach between them and close his hand around Haise’s dick. 

“Is that—” Hide began.

“Yeah, that’s great,” Haise interrupted. Hide stroked him slowly and Haise closed his eyes. His arms trembled where they were planted on either side of Hide’s head. 

“Hide,” Haise moaned. He just liked the feel of the name on his tongue. 

“Fuck, you look so good,” Hide said. He circled his thumb on the tip of Haise’s dick and Haise twined a hand in Hide’s hair. “You are so…you are _so hot_ ,” he continued as he kept his hand moving up and down Haise’s dick. Haise tipped his head back and squeezed his eyes closed. 

“Wait, Hide,” Haise managed. He opened his eyes and Hide’s hand stilled. “You should take your pants off.”

“Totally,” Hide replied quickly. Haise shifted back on the couch again and Hide reached for the button of his pants, but Haise beat him to it and quickly started pulling them down along with his boxers. Hide lifted his hips so Haise could tug his pants down past his ass and drop them on the floor. With his pants off, Haise could see the prosthetic leg Hide wore on his right side. The socks Hide still wore mostly covered the plastic foot that lead into an exposed metal rod and then the plastic cradle that held his leg. 

“Do you need to take that off?” Haise asked.

“No, it really shouldn’t get in the way,” Hide replied. Though Haise’s dick was fully hard and he just wanted Hide to touch him again, the thought of seeing Hide in the same state of pleasure that he had just been in was more appealing. He moved to kneel between Hide’s legs and hooked a hand under Hide’s thigh. He pressed his fingers against Hide’s skin and dipped his head to kiss down his thigh. Haise slid his hand down towards Hide’s hip as he moved that direction with his kisses—his movements earned a drawn-out moan when Haise reached the junction at the inside of Hide’s hip and gently kissed the base of his dick. Haise trailed his tongue up Hide’s shaft before taking the base in his hand and stroking. Hide groaned and dug his fingers into the couch cushions. 

Haise could have teased him but he mostly just wanted Hide in his mouth. Hide didn’t seem to mind when Haise took the head of his dick between his lips and dragged his tongue over the tip. Haise quickly pushed his head down until his lips met his closed hand, then tried to work up a steady rhythm. When he opened his eyes, he saw Hide with his chin tipped back, mouth wide and moaning. The light glittered gold on his bare chest. With his free hand, Haise guided Hide’s fingers into his hair. 

“Ah, fuck, Haise,” Hide breathed. He cautiously guided Haise’s head into a better rhythm, careful not to push him down too far. Haise just liked the way Hide handled his body so gently—Haise wasn’t accustomed to anyone touching him with gentleness. More than anything, though, he wanted Hide to feel good; he wanted to touch him with the same love and tenderness with which Hide touched him. 

Haise didn’t want to take his eyes off of Hide as he squirmed beneath him. His legs were shaking and his chest rose and fell rapidly. His grip tightened in Haise’s hair and his rhythm faltered, but Haise kept moving. He pressed his tongue to the roof of his mouth so it would feel like Hide was hitting the back of his throat without the choking risk, and Hide stuttered out a breathy moan. This was still selfish—Haise loved the feeling of Hide in his mouth, just because he was _Hide,_ and the way that he reacted to Haise’s touch sent shocks of pleasure into Haise’s dick. 

“Oh my god, Kaneki,” Hide breathed. “Fuck, Ken, please,” Haise faltered slightly when he heard the name, but the thought of pushing Hide over the edge was more than enough to motivate him to keep going. 

“Fuck, I’m gonna come,” Hide said through a moan. Haise stroked faster and kept his lips tight around Hide’s dick. Hide arched his back up off the couch slightly. “K-Ken,” he stuttered as he came in Haise’s mouth. Haise dragged his hand up and down a few more times until the tremors in Hide’s body abated, then drew his head back and wiped his lips on the back of his hand. Hide had draped his arm over his chest and he gazed at Haise through his eyelashes. Suddenly his eyes went wide.

“Oh my god, I’m so sorry!” Hide exclaimed. He pushed himself up into a sitting position so he was at Haise’s eye level. “I called you Kaneki…” he faltered. Haise just gripped his hair and kissed him fiercely. 

“It’s fine, it just surprised me,” he replied. “I’m not concerned about it right now.” He guided Hide’s hand to his dick. 

“Just a minute,” Hide said. He jumped up from the couch and disappeared into his bedroom. Before Haise could express his confusion, Hide had reappeared with a bottle of lube. Hide settled down on the couch again and kissed Haise quickly. “This okay?” he asked.

Haise nodded and Hide squirted lube onto his palm. He dropped his hand and gripped the base of Haise’s dick, making Haise moan in surprise and tightly squeeze Hide’s thigh. Haise draped his other arm over Hide’s shoulder. Hide drew his hand up slowly as he leaned in to kiss Haise’s neck. Haise’s hand slipped to his shoulder and his grip tightened there when Hide nipped at his neck. Hide slowly jerked him off while lavishing kisses and gentle bites along his neck and shoulders. Heat welled up in Haise’s stomach and poured into his chest. He felt like he could cry. 

Hide lifted his head and kissed Haise, lips wide so he could press his tongue into Haise’s mouth. He circled his thumb just below the head of Haise’s dick so he moaned loud into the quiet apartment. Haise’s fingers trembled on Hide’s skin but Hide kept his grip firm and his movements slow.

“Hide,” Haise moaned. “Please, I’m close, please make me come.” His lips moved against Hide’s when he spoke. 

“Look at me,” Hide murmured, and Haise opened his eyes. Hide’s expression was relaxed, and a smile tugged at his lips. Seeing Hide looking back into his eyes sent another jolt of heat into Haise’s abdomen. Hide squeezed tighter around Haise’s dick and picked up the pace of his strokes. Haise’s eyes fluttered shut reflexively and he dropped his face to Hide’s neck, breathing hard at the desperate pace of Hide’s hand on his dick. 

“Yes, Hide, Hide,” Haise moaned against Hide’s neck. He repeated it as came, his fingers digging into Hide’s thigh and shoulder as Hide kept stroking him through his orgasm. Hide lifted his hand away and dipped his face down toward Haise, who picked up his head for another long, warm kiss. 

Haise relaxed back into the couch and Hide went to the kitchen sink to wash off his hands. Haise thought vaguely that he should go clean up, too, but he stayed slumped where he was. The breeze from the window cooled his bare shoulders and the lamp glowed red and orange through his closed eyelids. Hide’s touch was the best distraction from his anxiety and the trickle of memories, but even the tired haze in his mind was enough to keep him calm and still. He could have fallen asleep right there in the sleepy bliss of Hide’s living room, but footsteps clicked along the floor. 

“Hey, do you want to go to my bedroom?” Hide asked from above. 

“Mm-hm,” Haise mumbled. He opened his eyes and there was Hide, completely naked and bright against the backdrop of muted blues and blacks of the house, with his hand extended to Haise. Haise smiled and twined their fingers together.


	7. Chapter 7

Haise woke to Hide’s quiet snores just beside his ear. Sunlight from the open window lit the bedroom white save for the brown sprawl of Hide’s body across the left side of the bed. His foot peeked out from below the hem of the tangled sheets and his arm draped across the pillow above his head. Haise awoke on his side with his legs tucked up and one arm thrown over Hide’s chest. He didn’t move his arm yet—he slowly pulled it back so he could trace the line of dark hair that intersected with Hide’s navel and the faint outlines of a couple ribs pressed up against his skin. Hide had grown a soft belly above the waistband of his boxers, and Haise circled his fingers there lovingly. 

“Hey,” Hide mumbled. “Are you awake or feeling me up in your sleep?” 

“Neither. You’re asleep and dreaming about me in your bed,” Haise replied. 

“It feels like I am. I’m not sure if I believe you’re here,” Hide said. He arched his back off the bed and Haise heard joints popping. “It’s not like I haven’t had this dream before.” Hide looked down at Haise and Haise tipped his chin up to kiss him softly. 

“You have sex dreams about me?” Haise chuckled when he drew away. He shifted his leg up around Hide’s waist and pulled his body in close. Hide slipped his arm under Haise’s neck. Haise leaned his weight into Hide’s body. He remembered the sunny Saturday mornings when they woke up in sleeping bags on the floor of Hide’s living room because they had fallen asleep watching movies in front of the television. Light suffused those memories like it did that morning in Hide’s bedroom for the first time in years. 

“I mean, dreams about waking up with you. And having coffee and going to a bookstore or a park or something.” Haise laughed.

“That’s so domestic,” Haise replied. He could hear Hide’s heartbeat where his ear pressed against his chest. Even in the recent rush of his memories he could not recall a time in which he felt more comfortable than he did at that moment. His best friend had that effect on him. 

“I also have sex dreams though,” Hide said with a grin. 

“I probably would have if I had memories,” Haise replied, and Hide lifted his hand to card his fingers through Haise’s hair. “I also probably would have done a lot of things. Like gone to that one gross night market in the 20th that we used to like.”

“Yeah, that place was disgusting. I’m surprised we made it through that alive so many times,” Hide said. His chest rose and fell slowly with his breath and Haise could feel the hum of his words through his skin. After a moment Hide continued: “So what do you want to do today since we’re both obviously not going to work?” 

“I want to go see Touka. She’s still down in the 20th Ward, working at a coffee shop,” Haise explained. 

“I thought she was dead, too! Damn, who else is going to show up randomly in my life? I’m kind of scared,” Hide replied. “But that sounds good. I haven’t been in the 20th in ages.” 

“We can probably get the train down there in an hour,” Haise suggested. As he said it, though, he decided he didn’t like the idea of getting out of bed in the near future.

“No rush,” Hide groaned as he stretched out his leg. “We still need coffee, and more cuddling, and sex, probably. We lost a lot of time, y’know.” 

“You have a point,” Haise murmured against Hide’s chest. He brushed his lips against Hide’s skin. For the first time in ages he wasn’t waking up exhausted, though he could still use another hour of lazing around in bed. There was something about the light in the room, and the comforting warmth of Hide’s chest beneath him, and the smell of Hide all around on his skin and sheets and in his hair that filled Haise with a bright fog. 

“This is unrelated, but I just realized that I don’t even have your number in my phone,” Hide said. He rolled over on his side, unceremoniously tossing Haise to the mattress with his movement, and reached for his phone on the bedside table. 

“That was rude,” Haise grumbled.

“No, I have to get your number, that’s what you do when you’re with someone,” Hide defended. His face lit with a smile and Haise decided he could get away with just about anything. 

“Fine,” Haise replied. “It’s—”

Hide cut him off. “No, I have to ask you for real.” He rolled onto his elbow to face Haise, and cleared his throat. “Hey Haise, can I have your number?” he asked grandly before winking.

Haise rolled his eyes and surprised Hide with a heavy kiss. Hide’s lips were warm and giving. Haise knew that it wasn't over, the trickle of memories, the panic; it would probably never be over. There were still things waiting in his mind and they were hungry and they were strong; but he could rest, at least, for a few hours with Hide. The sunlight shone white and gold on their bodies through the open window. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you to everyone who read, left kudos, and especially commented! It's lovely to receive this kind of support! I hope you all enjoyed it <3


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